title: Keys to Happiness

Awareness, Communication, Acceptance, Contentment.

These 4 basic concepts cover so many aspects of a healthy attitude, healthy mind and understanding of what it is to be truly ‘Happy’.

Happiness itself has become more of a concept than a feeling. It’s sort of like love, there are so many philosophies on what it is and we all have our own ideas about it’s definition and how to achieve it.

So what’s the answer?

This post doesn’t have it. Happiness will mean something different to each of us, achieving it is a very personal journey and understanding what happiness is to you is going to take more than a blog post. What i hope this does offer is perspective, encouragement and perhaps inspiration to make the most of what you’ve been given on this short journey called life.

Awareness

It’s important to have, develop and nurture a strong sense of self awareness (and as mothers, important to nurture this in our children) if we are not aware of ourselves and how our environment affects our emotional well being, we are open and unprepared for the affects things will have on us.

To be a muslim, we have to be in a constant state of awareness. We need to remain aware that Allah sees everything we do to prevent us from going astray, we need to remain aware that death is near so that we can prepare for it, we need to be aware of the miracles and signs in the creation of Allah that affirm our faith throughout the day.

Remaining aware of ourselves and how things affect us, and our Creator and the signs He has given us, this is one key to being truly happy.

Communication

Communicating with those around us, communicating with Allah and communicating with ourselves are all essential to remaining in an emotionally healthy state.

When we communicate with those around us, whether they are loved ones, coworkers or even strangers, we help them to understand us, and we begin to better understand them and the part they play in our lives. When we isolate ourselves, we have only one view of the world, our own, and while this is the view we should develop, on it’s own, without understanding other views, it will remain limited and incomplete.

As muslims, we are, whether we are aware of it or not, in a constant state of communication. When we are praying or making dua’ (supplication) we are communicating directly with Allah and this is one of the most important things to do as a muslim, communicate with Allah.

Shaitan himself is communicating with us regularly, and if we are aware of his communications to us, we have the opportunity to avoid what he is encouraging us to do.

It may sound silly, but we should also stay in close communication with ourselves. Reminding ourselves of the important things in life, encouraging ourselves when we need it, and keeping ourselves in check.

Communication enhances our state of self awareness and contributes to a whole state of happiness.

Acceptance

Even with a strong state of awareness and a healthy amount of communication, we all know there are many things in our environments that we have little or no control over. What can we do about these things we cannot change? We can accept them and change our attitude towards them.

Some of us deal with mental or physical illness or limitation that makes treatment necessary. Being aware of our illness or limitation gives us the opportunity to treat it and avoid our triggers or things that may exasperate the problem. Communicating with others gives us the opportunity for a diagnosis and the resources to get the help we need. Accepting the way Allah made us allows us to have a well adjusted attitude to our limitations.

No-one fully understands why some of the things that happen in our world have to happen, but as Muslims, we know that it is all in Allah’s wisdom and plan and we accept it as that.

Acceptance doesn’t mean defeat, it simply means that we are making the choice about how much we allow things we can’t change, to affect our state of emotional well being.

Contentment

This is really what it’s all about. Happiness is a term that has been over used, and over idealized, true happiness is contentment.

We remain aware of how we are affected by our environment and how life should be lived according to the Qur’an and Sunnah.

We communicate with those around us, ourselves and most importantly with Allah and we remain aware of those who are communicating with us.

We accept the things we cannot change about ourselves, our environment and the world as a whole. We accept that we, as humans, are imperfect and limited without underestimating our achievements and abilities.

With all of these things, we move to a state of contentment. To be at peace and acceptance with what you have, and what you don’t have.

Abu Huraira narrated that the Prophet said: Wealth is not in having vast riches, it is in contentment. (Bukhari, Muslim).